Welcome to the new Traders Laboratory! Please bear with us as we finish the migration over the next few days. If you find any issues, want to leave feedback, get in touch with us, or offer suggestions please post to the Support forum here.
SIUYA
-
Content Count
2232 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Everything posted by SIUYA
-
Technical Analysis: Is it voodoo? Or does it work?
SIUYA replied to Soultrader's topic in Market News & Analysis
As TA is really just a road map of prices - stick yourself on a desert island with the choice of fundamental analysis or TA and try and trade. Even Warren Buffett - arguably the worlds greatest fundamental investor stills insists on seeing the price. -
Welcome - i second mms - there are not many great scanning systems out there. they do exist - but often in the format that is either too limiting in what you can scan for, or too expansive in terms of you cant manage enough instruments and the scans are too generalised eg; highest volume. The issue is largely in stocks as potentially there are 10,000 of them around the world. eg; i might wish to test a certain pattern (not the regular stuff), but only on my own large list of stocks. Once this scan goes off, i can then quickly (and not spend hours data managing every day) nail down to a smaller sector of stocks. my two cents
-
[candlesticks] The Classic 'head and Shoulders' Pattern
SIUYA replied to TheNegotiator's topic in Technical Analysis
i read that book and enjoyed it - I think it more confirmed what i thought early on, as i was constantly told tech analysis does not work.... however - it also did help form my opinion of the importance of context and then once in the trade the importance of trade management. Nothing works all the time, but it can still help with indications of what might happen. Personally - HSH, wedges, flags etc - are all formed from abc patterns - apply some context, apply some simple trend analysis, and they offer good low risk areas for entry and trade management. -
"In fact we are seldom who we think we are, which is limiting to say the least." - johnw -- good call This is I think is often the part thats missing - too often - and no offense to anyone - all the changing yourself, and improving yourself, and modifying behavior is pointless when you are either unaware of who you are or deceiving yourself in the first place. This deception continues on a daily basis for many people, and the market shows this in the PL. How often do people believe that hindsight was in fact reality for them - they remember their winners, forget their losers and tell themselves and others they are picking the market brilliantly - when in reality IF they are actually trading their PL is vastly different. So in keeping with the thread - maybe it is often that people are attracted to trading as they thrive on that self deception, and until they actually commit money they are living in their fantasy......and then even when they do commit money and loose often its the market that screwed them, the brokers, the government, the insiders, the instos, the market makers ------ everyone but themselves.
-
who are you selling and marketing to MM ? I have to keep selling to myself
-
welcome - I hope your name does not imply your mental state
-
When I describe trading as a business it means i take it seriously - i have a plan, i have realistic budgets, I think about the risks, the management of money. etc; It does not mean the business model is the same as other businesses and there are customers, inventory, invoices etc; Just because someone describes trading as a business does not mean it needs to fit into your idea of a business model. On the same note too many business people are actually very good sales/presenting people - the alhpa male as Rande says. This means nothing in trading (except in the old days, intimidation on the trading floors did work to a degree). Great presenters, ideas men, sales people will likely struggle as the the market does not care about how impressive it seems. Leave this job to the CEOs etc; We were discussing this in our office the other day as all the brokers are pushing stocks - saying things such as " this is cheap, if you loved it at 9 you really like it at 6, i dont think you should panic, I dont think this will fall through this level........" Most are wrong, they are one trick ponies with no real market knowledge, and just as much insight as a monkey - or your average trader. (not to knock brokers, as most of us get our guesses wrong). The point being, these guys job is to get us to trade, usually to go long. Their skills are completely different to those of a trader, and one of the skills of a trader is to not listen to this, or at least beable to distance themselves from the sales pitch. To play their own game so to speak. As someone in the office said - they say there is no "i" in team - there is no "us" in trading
-
Can any kind candlestick expert soul help me understand and read this reversal in participants psychology terms? You need more context. What is the time frame - this could just be a few ticks, or a day, or a month. Is this part of a larger uptrend, and hence it may be a short term pullback, and thus a buying opp. Was this a small rally in a downtrend and hence a good sell signal with a break of A or B..... Without context its hard to understand if it was a lack of buyers, aggressive sellers, a pause, a continuation, a small pullback, a large pullback, a sell signal, a set up for a buy signal....etc; etc;
-
tradewinds and ingot - you are correct i took a very free and easy wording with average, and excluding the rich is a better way of talking about it. But without getting too much into semantics - I still think the world is still a better place for the system as it stands than ever before for the general (is that a better word ) mass of humanity. Plus when it comes to rich and poor, when then for most of us, we are rich compared to a lot of others on the planet so who are we to complain that others are richer...... The one thing that we all really should make sure of, and fight for is the ability for any common man to become fabulousnessnesessly wealthy, regardless of birthrights..... gee I guess then we better have open border immigration, get rid of the continuation of the dynastic couple who just got married in front of a worldwide audience last friday etc;etc; A whole other bag of fruits. This is an argument that will go round and round and as Ingot - you clearly have the most amount of time and passion in this subject ..... I will leave it at that. I have more pressing trading issues to delve into. Enjoy.
-
i think you also forgot some the greatest mass murderers of the recent centuries as well, Mao and Stalin. Those who ideologically may have/possibly/we hope so, actually thought they were helping to relieve the gap between the rich and the poor. Plus with a the evil v good, rich v poor comparisons - I guess Zuckerberg, Buffett, Gates.....that must mean they are evil....? I am sure there are plenty of evil rich and poor people. Also shouldn't we be concerned with average wealth - even on a relative scale, there are more people in the world who are wealthier than in the history of the world. Wealth is always going to a comparative relative measure, and yet so far the system seems to be working for the greatest number at present. Whats so wrong with that? too often people think it was better in the past, when in reality, they forget about the disease, war, famine, oppression that history is littered with.
-
"Maybe it is the grumpiness that comes with declining testosterone levels!" I hope not
-
we have enough humans on earth here who occasionally try this, it does not usually work over the long term. and is rather more counterproductive than helpful and/or effective
-
bad day Ingot? like all of us, as we get older the world gets a worse place than it was when we were younger. morals decline, ethics are gone, kids are unruly - the economy is in ruin. I knew I was getting old when I said "back in my day".... Seems like nothing has changed for generations - except we are wealthier, with generally declining rates of death, crime, and disease with more choices and more people. C'mon is the world really that bad a place or worse than its ever been??? .
-
ask the exchange you are willing to deal in they ideally will direct you to recommended providers. it has been a long while since I used them, but I remember RTS = real time systems (i think) and ORC software, were two. re contracts - every one is different. it depends on what they offer. plus dont forget you are then competing against in house built systems, and then it becomes a technology race.
-
a few points 1 ) any strategy that caps your upside, and exposes you to all the downside does not make sense to me - my own personal approach to the markets..... 2) the strategy can and does work - there are buy write funds out there....they usually outperform the long only funds.....but they are benchmarked to those funds and hence you pretty much just slightly outperform the long only funds. 3) they also work as they usually have a constant flow of money coming into them, and hence when markets fall they can ride it out and rewrite the options again. 4) the idea that a stock is volatile and less risky does not happen that often in reality..... 5) one or two trades can take you out if you are using excesive leverage - no new news there (this is the old picking up pennies in front of the steamroller analogy) 6) you generally need to adopt a portfolio approach to make this work - its the selling insurance premium approach - it works if the pool of money is big enough, the spread of risks is enough a single event wont be too costly, you require, cash flows to keep you in the game when a natural disaster occurs, etc; etc; 7) as the Neg says - costs can kill you if you get it wrong. Otherwise, like anything it will work some times, a lot of the times, most of the time.....its just when it does not, there will be no liquidity for you, and you will be on the wrong side of the trade. (i have friends who run a few funds like this - they know how to do it, they make money from running the funds, but even they say its not a great strategy to make money from)
-
The Most Important Video Series You'll Ever See
SIUYA replied to Ingot54's topic in General Discussion
thanks - always interesting, reminds me of the a few things. 1) Einstein - his supposed quote about compound interest being the greatest force in the universe 2) the idea that if you had a gold coin, that supposedly you could compound at about 7% a year since the time of Jesus, then it would be a gold nugget the size of the earth. 3) if you could take a piece of paper and fold it in half, and double it size (lets just assume you could for this experiment), its amazing how few times (it is supposedly only about 64 times) you would need to do so before it reaches the moon in height. All these things seem crazy - but compounding works. scalability is another matter. -
its a combination of the overriding trend - bull markets tend to ignore bad news a combination of the current context and mood - is the market nervous, bouyant, bearish, bullish a combination of expectation and then the magnitude of that the potential influence of those expectations and the possible move - eg; bad news might cause a market to fall for a day, and then rally as its in an uptrend the fact that often news is actually historically reported the fact that news is often based on opinion and not fact this then leads to incorrect assumptions the fact that news is often irrelevant, its not news, its a small piece of the jigsaw....... This is often why I dont listen to the news
-
What Demographic is Most Likely to Lose in Trading?
SIUYA replied to emg's topic in Trading Psychology
EMG - post 12 - Show me a woman who’s a competent prop trader. I’ll show you a man in disguise. I have worked with female traders who are good, and this is an apt description. Its not that women cannot trade, its just that often it seems that they adopt male characteristics to do so. Otherwise EMG, have you recently become divorced or broken up with the girlfriend? -
amazing. all that to change a light bulb - there is a joke in there somewhere. reminded me of those old photos of the dogmen who used to build those early skyscapers and bridges - no harness, no safety equipment - just nerves of steel. thanks
-
didn't George Soros say when you have tremendous conviction on a trade, you have to go for the jugular. It takes courage to be a pig I like the little piggies
-
blowfish and MM say it all perfectly for me.
-
we were discussing a similar thing in the office today. A large number of equity brokers were busy pushing the idea that the AUD is overbought - I wonder if they actually think that the USD is oversold - as thats one of the reasons for the recent rapid rise. This whole idea of a a parabolic move seems to be becoming more prelevant - I am sure its much the same for the CAD.... highs and lows are there to be broken
-
it also takes money to make money most of the time.....and guess who often has money when the banks wont lend, and they are not too worried about feeding their family and hanging onto a job.
-
or a more active short term system that allows for smaller and more losses, but still allows for positions to be built for the longer term trends, even if the win rate is poor. Too often the larger looses in order to try and ride the trends hurt, more than the number of loss making trades. As brokerage rates and volumes increase, slippage and fees factor less than they used to in many instruments. (I dont really know the maths, but would figure this also seems to work )
-
mslk - i keep track of everything from an accounting point of view in excel for a number of reasons. I can manipulate it how ever i want, in terms of looking at overall risk, and what if scenarios from a portfolio point of view. I can combine various different accounts, track my equity as I see fit, and it keeps a good record of all my trades. I dont trust most brokers systems, and this gives me a check for them as well. It takes a little bit of time like 5 mins in the morning and afternoon to enter trades (using cut and paste) and making sure everything looks right, but it works and gives me piece of mind. How detailed you want to get this is entirely up to you. When it comes to historical data accuracy, and screening - then this is a never ending search for what suits you, and unfortunately is riddled with issues. As a suggestion - Interactive Brokers has great systems for its accounting, but poor data and charts. Simple screening and is well suited to stocks and options. I hear their API is really good also. Plus they are cheap.